Enriching Architectural Design Education through Interactive Displays and Local Community Engagement: Fid-Bau Portal

Enriching Architectural Design Education through Interactive Displays and Local Community Engagement

Guaralda, Mirko / Amayo Caldwell, Glenda / Rittenbruch, Markus

Designers have a social responsibility to deal with the needs, issues, and problems confronting their clients and communities. Students of design require opportunities to reflect on their role as social facilitators to develop an attitude towards community engagement through different phases and aspects of their careers. Current design courses are challenged by compressed timeframes and fragmented scenarios of different academic requirements that do not actively teach community engagement. This paper outlines a participatory and technological approach employed to address these issues within the teaching of architecture and urban design at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. A multi-phase community-based research project with stakeholders was implemented over a two-year period. Approximately 150 students in the final year of the Bachelor of Design – Architecture, ten students in the Master of Architecture, and fifteen students in the Master of Design – Urban Design informed and influenced each others’ learning through the teaching and research nexus facilitated by this project. The technical approach was implemented in the form of a bespoke digital platform that supported the display and discussion of digital media on a series of interactive touch walls. The platform allowed students to upload their final designs easily onto large interactive surfaces, where visitors could explore the media and provide comments. Through the use of this technical platform and the introduction of neogeography, students have been able to broaden their level of interaction and support their learning experience through external structured and unstructured feedback from the local community. Students have not only been exposed to community representatives, but have been working in parallel on a specific case study providing each other, across different years and courses, material for reflection and data to structure their design activities.